Player Web sites go from the corporate to the sublime

	No doubt Grace Park is contemplating how best to incorporate Flash presentations on her Web site. Jonathan Ferrey/Getty Images

Funny the things Maria Sharapova can stir in a man. While carefully scrutinizing her swimsuit gallery on SI.com -- for journalistic reasons only, of course -- I suddenly remembered that Grace Park's long-overdue personal Web site had launched this week, at http://www.gracepark.us/. I decided to investigate.

The vanity Web site is a strange little corner of the golf universe. I'm embarrassed to admit that I surf many of them. In a measure of how remote many top players have become, news is increasingly disseminated through personal Web sites, and that's generally what I'm interested in.

Tiger Woods, as usual, is in the vanguard, as he posts a lot of mini-scoops in his diary at tigerwoods.com. My favorite entry of all time was his awkwardly worded missive defending the honor of his then-girlfriend Elin, when topless photos of someone who looked exactly like her spread across the web. Tiger assured his faithful readers that the pics were not authentic and that Elin never had posed nude and has no plans to do so. Bummer!

The obvious appeal of a personal Web site is that news can be spread without the filter of pesky reporters. Thus, when Woods created a little controversy by blowing out of New Jersey on Sunday evening of last year's PGA -- despite the outside chance he could have been part of a playoff following the Monday morning restart -- he merely had to post a smug assertion that everything was under control. The message was sent out to the world, unchallenged.

For international players, their personal sites are often the best source of information about scheduling. At darrenclarke.com, Darren Clarke provided very personal accounts of his wife's battle with cancer and how that has impacted his decisions on when and where to play. (Of course, Clarke is such a character he still manages to have some fun on his site; a recent pic on the home page had him puffing a pipe a la Sherlock Holmes and asking for reader input on his new hobby.)

Probably the most comprehensive of all the player sites is ernieels.com. Ernie Els' weekly diary was a helpful way to stay updated following his injury last summer. What separates Ernie's site from the controlled, corporate feel of Tiger's and Phil Mickelson's and others is how personal Els gets. There are very interesting links about his family, replete with old photos and extremely specific information. (Did you know that daughter Samantha's favorite food is broccoli?) Els also posted photos from the family's Mediterranean vacation last summer, though, it should be noted, there are no pics of Ernie tubing.

But in surveying player Web sites, the gold standard has to be Patperezgolf.com. In a nod to Pat Perez's raging temper, the logo is a golf ball being engulfed by flames and the background music on the homepage is by The Cult ("The fire in your eyes keeps me alive ...").

Perez's blog is great reading, chock full of his surfer-dude patois and third person references to Double P. He's also prone to posting his own photos. Note the honeys in the crowd from his fourth annual party at the Phoenix Open. Most player sites have an obligatory nod to commerce, but here you can buy the coolest headcover in the world, the Pat Perez Boxing Glove model, signed by Double P himself.

So how does Grace Park's site stack up? Let's just say she and her eggheads have some work to do.

The home page is an embarrassment, featuring a Nike press release from 2003 and a lame Q & A from LPGA.com that is almost as moldy. The oversized logos of her sponsors should also be de-emphasized. If you take the time to join her fan club -- which I did in a flagrant violation of the reporter's code of conduct -- then you have access to some marginally better stuff, including a chat room, message board and a photo gallery of nothing but boring golf pictures.

Speaking of the photo gallery, this brings me back to my muse, Ms. Sharapova. A few years ago SI did a feature on Park and the writer floated the idea of her gracing the pages of the swimsuit issue. Park declined, saying she didn't want the world to see her "back fat." I don't even know what that it is, but it seems to me gracepark.us is the perfect place for a thorough explanation.